1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to an automatic phase extraction device which automatically conducts preprocessing manipulations for analysis of organic chemical components that are contained in drug substances, agricultural chemicals, and water, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Liquid chromatography analysis is conducted, for example, to analyze chemical substances that are contained in a sample solution.
This is a device which analyzes components after sample solution has been added by drops from above into a long, cylindrical solid phase extraction tube packed with solid phase adsorption agent. The solute is adsorbed into solid phase, and after preprocessing has been conducted to dissolve out the target components using a solvent flow to separate the solute that has been adsorbed into solid phase, the components are analyzed by placing this in a detector (for example, a differential refraction detector, an ultraviolet absorption detector, an ultraviolet spectrophotometer, or a fluorophotometer).
Then, because it is inefficient to manually conduct these operations which require a great deal of time particularly in preprocessing until the target component is dissolved out, in recent years there have been proposals for devices that automatically conduct these preprocessing manipulations in order to increase processing efficiency.
This is done such that, after sample solution within a test tube has been taken in by a needle nozzle, the position of which has a controllable in 3 orthogonal axes X-Y-Z, and this solution has been injected into a solid phase extraction tube, the eluate which contains the desired components is extracted by adding a solvent by drops into said solid phase extraction tube at a stipulated flow rate.
Because the injection of sample solution and the infusion of solvent into the solid phase extraction tube can all be done automatically, preprocessing up to dissolving out the target component can be conducted without human intervention, and consequently the processing efficiency is greatly improved by, for example, operating day and night.